Coda
by Clio S.S
Summary: Bansai and Shinsuke after Benizakura. It still escapes me as to how Bansai is vicious and cruel (according to GintamaWiki). Please, enjoy.


The ship is ascending and slowly gathering its speed. Getting out of the atmosphere is going to take a bit longer, yet Bansai turns away in order to leave already. There's nothing to see here; Edo is just a spot by the ocean, and it's going to soon vanish from the sight. He will probably return here sooner he can expect. He doesn't regret departing into space again since for him even the space sings.

Something, perhaps a quiver in the melody, makes him look at Shinsuke again - and it's a good thing he does so... For Shinsuke breaks away from the railing, takes his eyes off the earth below and looks up, leaning back, lifts one hand as if covering his eyes from the sun, yet he doesn't stop, only having reached the highest point starts to decline, fall backwards - all in one smooth movement that seems to have no end. Though it's going to have it soon, and painful.

Bansai's instinct - polished by his life of a samurai yet developed much earlier by taking care of three younger sisters - lets him catch the man before it happens. For a split moment, he wonders what to do - he can't take him to the cabin, but he won't have any Amanto help him - then, however, he simply put him down on the deck, for Shinsuke is conscious.

You wouldn't really call that glazed look and muttering a state of consciousness, but Bansai knows him well enough to know there's nothing to worry. He doesn't intend to worry about Shinsuke - the man who wants to destroy the world - more than usually, yet he has to admit he _is_ surprised. He drives away a nagging thought that during his absence no-one probably saw to Shinsuke's getting enough sleep. Still, it doesn't change the fact that meeting old comrades shouldn't have exhausted him so much, for that petty scratch can't be blamed for it... Takasugi Shinsuke is able to astonish him again and again, and that thought isn't unpleasant.

Realizing it lasts just a semiquaver, for he is soon drawn to Shinsuke's speech. The man covers his face with one arm and is speaking as if he really were somewhere else, not here on the Harusame ship - or it simply doesn't matter to him. The place and the company doesn't matter to him. And Bansai thinks that Shinsuke, whose voice is barely audible over the increasing noise of the wind, has never spoken so honestly and that this one time the words are well matched with the melody. He likes to listen to him regardless, and so he is listening now - to the quiet words that aren't meant for him...

"Zura, what do you know...? You, who never saw further than the end of your nose... You know what, Zura? You haven't changed a bit. In presumption... in conceit you still see only one truth and don't accept... no, you just don't _consider_ the option someone else can be right."

_...each of them on a different chord..._

"It's your business, Zura, but there's a problem here. You try to impose it on others. You keep singing those pretty truisms and spreading those clichéd ideals of yours and force others to believe them."

_...ascending and descending in the octaves..._

"No, Zura, I won't have the likes of you lecture me. Because when you, Zura, kept your eyes fixed on the book and recited your top answers, I was looking and seeing... I lived."

_...staccato..._

"So don't tell me that Gintoki has the most reasons... Don't tell me his hatred is greater... Don't tell me... For you know nothing..."

_"Whyever didn't you tell him that?"_

Only after a moment of silence Bansai realizes he spoke aloud. He didn't mean to, he really didn't, but something in Shinsuke's melody - some crack cutting to the bone, some sudden final no-one can endure - made it impossible to calmly listen to it. Maybe one day he will get used to.

Maybe.

Shinsuke opens his only eye and frowns. He looks at him - only as a shadow obscuring the sunlight - and then reaches to his throat. "If you ever mention it, I'll kill you. Remember it," he says, but his voice is devoid of previous emotions.

Bansai shrugs and rises. There's nothing to do here, and Shinsuke has already recovered: he levers himself up on the elbow and glares at him, and just can't grasp it's all in vain, for he is never believed.

Bansai takes a deep breath that helps him calm the vibrating strings. He leaves, knowing that music fits the stave again.


End file.
